Voting by Email

Voting by Email Outlook 2003 enables you to do more with email than just send and reply to messages. Along with meeting and task requests, you can use Outlook to send and compile votes. The requirements for voting include
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Voting by Email[ Team LiB ]Voting by EmailOutlook 2003 enables you to do more with email than just send and reply to messages.Along with meeting and task requests, you can use Outlook to send and compile votes.The requirements for voting include • Recipients must use Outlook. • Messages must be sent using RTF (rich text format).When these conditions are met, your message will be sent with voting buttons. When therecipients vote, their votes are sent back to you and Outlook tallies the votes.Open the Options dialog and add a check to Use Voting Buttons (see Figure 7.2). Thisautomatically creates voting buttons using the text in the field. By default, Outlookincludes selections for Approve;Reject, Yes;No, and Yes;No;Maybe. You arent limitedto using these choices: You can type any text you want to use to label your voting buttonsin the field as long as you remember to use a semicolon as the delimiter between buttonnames. Figure 7.2. When enabling voting buttons, select a predefined set of voting button text or enter your own text, separating the button text with semicolons.When the recipient opens the message, shell see buttons at the top of the form (seeFigure 7.3). Outlook 2003 users can also vote from the Reading Pane by clicking in theInfoBar and choosing one of the voting selections from the menu.Figure 7.3. Recipients click on the button to vote and Outlook sends their responses to you. A recipient can change his mind and cast a new vote as often as he wants; however, only the last vote is included in the tally.Choosing Edit the Response Before Sending opens a reply so that the recipient can replyas if it were a normal message (see Figure 7.4). This doesnt affect the vote results andgives the recipient the chance to explain her choice, ask questions, and make a comment. Figure 7.4. After choosing the vote selection, Outlook offers the choice ofimmediately returning the ballot or opening a message form to include a reply with the vote.When votes come back to you, Outlook keeps a tally on the original message in the SentItems folder (see Figure 7.5). Figure 7.5. After the first vote is returned to you, the original message in the Sent Items folder displays a Tracking tab. The message must remain in the Sent Itemsfolder for tracking to work with new voting responses. When its time to end voting, move the item out of the Sent Items folder.The tracking list prints when you print the message, although the tally in the InfoBar isnot included in the printout. You can also copy and paste the list into a file. Select thefirst item in the list, hold the Shift key, and select the last item using the Down Arrowkey, the Page Down key, or your mouse. After selecting the list, use Ctrl+C to copy andpaste it into another program file, such as Excel or Notepad, or even a message or postform. Occasionally, votes are not returned in RTF format and Outlook cannot tally them. Unfortunately, Outlook doesnt enable you to edit the voting responses on the original message, and youll have to count the votes yourself.Voting works perfectly when all users are on the same Exchange Server, but when doneproperly, it works equally well for POP3, IMAP, and HTTP accounts. You just have toremember to set the message format to RTF and enable each recipient for RTF. Toaccomplish that, double-click on an email address to bring up the E-mail Propertiesdialog. If this opens a contact form, double-click on the contacts email address to openthe Properties dialog. Choose Send using Outlook Rich Text Format from the InternetFormat field and close the dialog. Repeat this for each address to which youre sendingthe message. Coupled with choosing Rich Text format for the message, this enables yourvoting buttons to work when sent to other Outlook users.If you need to send a voting form to many Internet addresses, open Tools, Options, MailFormat, Internet Format and change the Internet Format to Send using Rich TextFormatting. Make this change before creating the message and change it back to plaintext or HTML format after voting ends to prevent problems if you accidentally composean RTF message to send to non-Outlook users.[ Team LiB ]